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Offshore catenary risers are used in the exploitation of deep-water oil and gas fields. They are subjected to severe dynamical loads, such as high-pressure inside-flow of fluids, sea-current external flow, and seawave motion of the floating production platform. This paper addresses the dynamic instability caused by vortex-induced vibrations (VIV). For simplicity, the touchdown-point motion and the mooring compliance are neglected in this introductory study. The nonlinear normal modes of a finite element model of the riser are determined, following the invariant manifold procedure, and a mode that is particularly prone to be excited by VIV is selected. A reduced mathematical model that couples the structural response and the fluid dynamics is used to foresee the vibration amplitudes when the instability caused by VIV takes over. Active control is introduced and the linear quadratic regulator is employed to determine gain matrices for the system and the observer. Results are compared with those from a linear analysis.

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